It’s another big big show, with four CES interviews with Analogix SlimPort video connectors, Netgear about their outdoor Orbi, Acronis backup solution, and L’Oréal’s UV Sense product. We’ve also got a photography tip by Rally about digital zoom vs cropping (followed by some fun experiments by me) and a review of the free iOS app Klok by Helma. Bart brings us up to speed with the latest on Security Bits.
Tag: backups
2017 Year in Review Part 1 – What Am I Still Using?
I’ve always thought it might be interesting to look back on all of the products I’ve reviewed over the years and see what I’m still using. That would be a gargantuan effort, given that I’ve been doing this for over 12 years!
But then I thought, maybe I could look at the past year and see what products are still valuable and what just fell away over time and maybe a quick discussion on why. I went through every blog post to see what I talked about in 2017, so here goes.
Continue reading “2017 Year in Review Part 1 – What Am I Still Using?”
NC #644 MiX16 Pro, Snapchat Spectacles, Strategies to Introduce Someone to a Smart Phone, Backup Strategies, Teampaper Snap
Remember to join us in the live chartroom for the Apple announcement on Tuesday at podfeet.com/live. Allister Jenks brings us his journey as a podcaster going from Castblaster to MiX16 Pro, and Denise Crone gives us her first-hand review of Snapchat Spectacles. Steve and I convinced his mom to get her first smartphone and I’ll talk through the strategy we employed to hopefully make it a success. Joop joins us from the Netherlands to tell us about his really advanced and automated backup strategy. I’ll finish off with a review of the free menubar app Teampaper Snap for taking screenshots, annotating and sharing them.
NC #642 B2 Storage from Backblaze, Capturing a Total Eclipse, iPhone Forerunners, Parallels Toolbox
In what can only be considered prescient, Allister Jenks has a review of Backblaze’s B2 log-term storage solutions right as CrashPlan bails on home customers. I’ll walk you through how Steve managed to capture video and create an awesome photo of the total solar eclipse, while still enjoying the experience with minimal camera fiddling. Ryan Winkler joins us for the first time about two products I’ve recommended, Webcam Settings and the ATR2100 microphone. Allister comes back in with a talk on the Forerunners of the iPhone. Then I do an extensive review of all of the tools in the fantastic Parallels Toolbox.
When Bad Things Happen to Good Computers
This post is Part 4 (the grand finale) of a 4-part saga. To read Part 1, please enjoy: AppleCare Needs a Frequent Flyer Program.
It’s time for the final post about my MacBook Pro and iCloud woes from this week, because after four full days, both are finally working! The path there was fascinating.
To recap, my 2016 MacBook Pro went into Apple repair because it wouldn’t charge, and my 2013 MacBook Pro, which was restored from a backup of the 2016, couldn’t access any Apple cloud services. My little friend Erica from Executive Relations had escalated my repair, while my little friend Senior Advisor Specialist Joe was helping me crack the code on iCloud with engineering.
The good news is that my 2016 MacBook Pro was returned to my hot little hands on Wednesday afternoon, day 3 since it had been shipped, day 5 since it had died. Continue reading “When Bad Things Happen to Good Computers”
#NC 622 Tech Stories From South American Travel, Maps Without Data, Dumb Question Corner, Security Bits
posted the photos of our Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu hike in Peru on Google Photos with links to both here Photos from South America – Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu. There’s no Chit Chat Across the Pond this week but Bart’s back next week to teach us Test Driven Development in Programming By Stealth. I was on Clockwise this week: relay.fm/clockwise episode #183 and on Let’s Talk Apple: lets-talk.ie Episode #43. I’ll regale you with tech stories from our travels in South America, Rally Barnard will give you a quick and very slick tip on how to get turn-by-turn directions without using any data while on international travel, in Dumb Question Corner I’ll answer Kurt’s question about how to automatically archive iTunes Podcasts. Bart was out ill this week so I did my first ever solo Security Bits.
Dumb Question Corner – How to Automatically Back Up Podcasts from iTunes
Our dumb question this week comes from Kurt. He nearly violated one of my cardinal rules in his question, but I’ve decided to allow it. He wrote:
Hi Allison, this dumb question gets dangerously close to the red line of No iTunes Questions, but I thought I would ask it anyway…
I’d like to be able to archive podcasts on a dedicated media drive. I currently do this manually, copying them out of the appropriate iTunes directory once or twice a year to the media drive and deleting them from the original directory. I always worry that going behind the back of iTunes like this is going to mess something up.
In an ideal world a folder action or an automator script would just watch a certain podcast directory, and copy the file to the media drive automagically every time that iTunes downloads one. Then I could set iTunes to delete podcasts after they have been listened to, and I’d have the best of both worlds – a lightweight, trim iTunes folder, and archived backups of podcasts. However, I’ve never really grokked Apple automation methods.
Or do you have any other ideas? The goal is to free up space from the gigabytes of podcasts that accumulate in my home folder on an SSD while retaining the ability to occasionally go back and listen to an older podcast without downloading.
Cheers, thanks for the entertaining weekly dose of tech,
Kurt
Continue reading “Dumb Question Corner – How to Automatically Back Up Podcasts from iTunes”
Tech Stories From Travel in South America
As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Steve and I went to South American for two and a half weeks to visit the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, and to hike Machu Picchu in Peru. Being geeks, we brought an enormous amount of tech with us, and used just about every bit of it. We thought it might be interesting to talk through what worked well on a trip like this and give a few anecdotes of tech fun along the way.
Project Fi
Probably the single best thing we did was get the Project Fi card. In an article back in March, I explained that Project Fi is a data SIM you can get from Google, and put into an iPhone, to get data internationally in 135 countries. We got one card with a phone number and data, and a second data-only SIM that shared the same plan. There are a lot of details I won’t go into again, but the bottom line is that we had data at only $10/GB. Continue reading “Tech Stories From Travel in South America”
NC #616 udoq, CodeRunner, Olly, CrashPlan, Wynd
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell from TWiT join me this week on Chit Chat Across the Pond to talk about their swap of iOS and Android. Our last three interviews from CES include the udoq Mobile Docking Station, Olly’s Robotic Personal Assistant, and the Wind Smart Air Purifier. I’ll tell you about my hunt for the perfect code editor and why I chose CodeRunner. A surprising turn of events as CrashPlan actually succeeds at getting my offsite backups to work. It’s a really interesting story of what caused the problem and how they fixed it. It even highlights a shortcoming of Backblaze.
Continue reading “NC #616 udoq, CodeRunner, Olly, CrashPlan, Wynd”
CrashPlan Didn’t Give Up
A few weeks ago I talked about the long adventure I’d been through with Lawrence from CrashPlan trying to help me adopt my off-site backup from my 2013 MacBook Pro to my 2016 MacBook Pro. I explained that he’d worked really hard but never could get a backup running for me.
I tested out Backblaze, and found that in just 18 hours it had successfully backed up my new Mac. I gave Lawrence the link to the blog post about what happened, and you would think the story would end there, but you would be wrong.